Francisco da Silva Júnior
T
he memory of sisters Maria and Sieglinde Lenk, prom-inent athletes in Brazilian and in Olympic swimming, cannot be dissociated from their family history and cul-ture, linked entirely to the culture of the Lenks, German immigrants, who brought Germanic education and socio-cultural habits that merged with Brazilian culture, resulting in two icons of sport and education in Brazil.Paul Lenk and Martha Rosa married in 1912 and had twins on January 15, 1915: Maria and Hertha. The latter became seriously ill and died in March, 1916. In the following years, Rosa and Paulo had Ernesto and Sieglinde, Linda, as Maria used to call her. The three children, especially the girls, al-ways had the encouragement of their parents to practice sports, a distinguished feature of the German culture, not linked to prejudices against the female figure that existed at that time in Brazil.
Encouraged by her father, Maria learned to swim in the Tietê river, strengthening her body and increasing resis-tance to diseases. It was also in the Tietê River that Maria had her "début" in swimming competitions, and where she
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conquered her first victory. With the German way of think-ing, in 1931, Paul allowed her to make her first trip to an-other state, Rio de Janeiro, in an attitude that Maria called
"progressive", within the context of the time. It would be the first confrontation between swimmers from the two largest Brazilian cities. Attitudes of this kind were always present in Maria’s life and, later, in her sister’s.
With her excellent results in classic breaststroke and also in free swimming (crawl), Maria Lenk went to the Los An-geles Olympics in 1932. She was granted travel authoriza-tion by her parents, Paul and Rosa, who did not impose greater conditions than those of natural care for the health and integrity of their daughter. Maria participated in all the swimming events of the three styles of the Olympic pro-gram, doing better in the 200m of the classic breast style, getting the eighth best time.
In 1933, Sieglinde Lenk started swimming competitions, ap-pearing in sports reviews, always with victories in her cate-gory. Maria and Linda formed what can be called a perfect duo: they participated in almost all national and interna-tional competitions of the time, which they often won. Lin-da, in particular, would go on to become a South American champion at all distances of the backstroke style, always making a winning double with her sister. They came to be known as the Lenk sisters, marking with golden letters the participation in competitions until the end of their career.
In the family context, the victorious Lenk sisters were hon-ored by a careful selection of photos, newspapers articles and other items collected and organized in scrapbooks by their mother, Rosa Lenk. She created a thorough work of cataloguing the results and historical passages of both athletes, her daughters, from the early 1930s until the end of their careers. Thus, information related to the two sisters survived in 23 file folders, allowing a follow-up of
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their brilliant athletic careers. In particular, the collection focused on Maria Lenk, who would come to stand out as one of the greatest swimmers of the world, giving way to a legacy of importance and pioneering for the history of the sport in our country. The collection today is housed at the National Archives.
Among the various legacies found in these precious fold-ers, it is important to highlight the role that the Los An-geles Olympic Games played featuring women's sport, guaranteeing space in newspapers, showing records of constant presence of the public largely interested in fe-male participation.
Another legacy found in the now called Maria Lenk Col-lection refers to a competitive event that became famous among São Paulo sportspeople: the "Travessia de São Pau-lo a Nado", one of the most traditional swimming compe-titions of the first half of the 20th century, with reduced participation of women, in its first phase (1924-1930) and then, the second phase (1932-1944), with Maria Lenk win-ning the editions from 1932 to 1935. From 1936 onwards, competitions were won by Sieglinde, because Maria had left São Paulo.
Another fact of memory of the Lenk sisters and partici-pation of other Brazilian women athletes was the edition of the XI Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. Maria and Lin-da had the company of four more women athletes. The scrapbooks Rosa organized were enriched with photos and newspapers articles. After the end of the Games, Maria and Linda toured Germany, participating in friendly tour-naments in several cities. There were also opportunities of knowledge exchange, especially because Maria had grad-uated in Physical Education in March 1936, in the first class of the University of São Paulo – USP, before traveling to the Games.
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Maria and Linda participated together in several competi-tions such as the VI South American Swimming Champion-ships in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and also the VII South Amer-ican Swimming Championships in Viña del Mar, in Chile.
Maria ended her career in 1942, in a last tournament in the United States, where
she participated in competitions in which she surpassed 12 times the American records, three of them considered world records. However, they were not homologated by FINA, because they took place in pools with measures in yards. More information about the athletic and academic career of Maria Lenk is available in the previous chapters of this book.
Linda left the competitions in 1944, when she still defend-ed the colors of Minas Tênis Clube, where he had movdefend-ed in 1937, in a successful career and with many records bro-ken, especially, South American. Linda then settled in Rio de Janeiro, where she got married in 1947, going on to de-vote herself entirely to the family and the raising of her four children. She passed away on December 22, 1986, due to ovarian cancer.